[Info-vax] VMS Features I Wish Linux Had

[Michael Moroney]

Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:

>On 2016-06-11, Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 6/10/16 9:17 AM, John E. Malmberg wrote:
>>> On 6/9/2016 10:37 PM, lawrencedo99 at gmail.com wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The other one is the terminal driver. My first impression of Unix
>>>> was  what a crap terminal driver it had, that echoes everything as
>>>  > soon as it’s typed. Seems like no other system has seen fit to
>>>  > emulate the thoughtful VMS feature of not echoing anything until
>>>  > it is actually being recognized as input to a program.
>>>
>>> Which can let text not intended to be echoed like passwords leak to the
>>> terminal output.
>>>
>>
>> Unix (and thus Linux) has built in method that prevents things like
>> passwords from echoing.
>>

>John wasn't talking about what happens when you start typing after the
>password read I/O has been queued. He was talking about what happens
>if you start typing before that and he is quite correct - text which
>should not be echoed _does_ get echoed.

Exactly.  I see this a lot on Unix type systems.  Type login, return, 
password in quick succession and I see my password echoing back at me.  
VMS doesn't echo anything until there is an outstanding read consuming it.